After a fairly prolonged preop period, they wheel me into a surgical room that looks like a Star Trek set. This part of the hospital opened 9 months ago, so it has bells and whistles galore. One item was a ca. 60 inch high res video monitor. A portable X-ray was just above my head. Folks are in there ripping open myriad packages of this and that, including six large sensors they attack to my back and chest. They were cold. These are used to detect where the catheter is positioned, I should say catheters, they use three. I was chatting with my Vietnamese anesthesia guy when the lights go out. My lights. They made a small incision in my femoral vein and ran the catheters up into my beating heart and cauterizes dots on the right atrial valve where the electrical signal is getting messed up. They said I had a classic case of atrial flutter. This procedure was developed ca. 1997, before that you had to live with AFlutter, which trust me, is very unpleasant, 24/7.
The worst part was having to lie supine for four hours postop. My back started aching a lot, worse than childbirth, probably. The doc said my flutter is already gone, and I can tell I have a steady pulse now, not this random pulses that were causing the issue. I have to take it easy for five days and then he says I'm good to go, which is amazing, the only potential issue is reopening the vein incision point, which would be bad, and I'm taking Xarelto.
So, it's all good news. Catherine has to take care of me for almost a week, but she'd already been doing that. I went to bed early so I'm up early. Vitals are great. I should be back to normal in less than a week. I'll be taking drugs for a while, maybe forever, we'll see.
